


A Family Affair

by shadoedseptmbr



Series: Tales from the Shelterverse [14]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 14:35:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2113596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadoedseptmbr/pseuds/shadoedseptmbr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before he's banished to the Chantry, Sebastian performs a service to his family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Family Affair

Sebastian made a practice of watching his parents. 

He was required to attend any official court function, of course.  And it did make for good practice; to watch unobserved as politely, they danced; politely, they ate; oh _so_ politely, his father walked to her rooms across the gardens every third Tuesday to spend an evening in her company. 

It wasn’t a hidden thing.  His father had women.  He and Mother had been estranged for as long as Sebastian could recall.  His mother was perhaps more discreet but she also had her distractions, mainly young artists interested in patronage.

Most of the time, his father’s women were not much younger than his mother.  Clearly meant for companionship as much as anything less innocent.  Now and again, though, there was a younger one, one with maybe some ulterior intent.  Sly-eyed sylphs hoping to change their fortunes and grab at the Vael name for their own, too impatient to wait upon the heirs. 

And they were usually gone quickly.

Lady Arabella, though.  Lady Arabella was smart.  Delicate, with sun-kissed skin and hair like a dark cloud.  And just the right combination of innocence and knowledge to lead a lonely man on a path of dangerous thoughts. 

Sebastian watched her prowl the ballrooms of Starkhaven like a sleek, well-cared for cat; talking only to the best placed, the most interesting, the loveliest of the nobles and the artists his mother patronized.  Ambitious, too.  He had to admire her for it.

After all, it took one to know one.  He rarely got her attention.  He wasn’t a step on her rung. 

His eldest brother Luc seemed unsure what to do with her familiarity, but his wife, Meghan, had put a stop to it quickly.  Alec was safely away in Orlais.

Until she turned her calculating eyes on his father.  And, much to Sebastian’s surprise, Simeon Vael looked back. 

It was only another dalliance…but devious little Arabella lured the Prince on.  Never giving in, never more than a dance and a flushed cheek after too long on the balcony.  A smile and a lingering hand. 

Gossip sprang up and in the wake, his father broke it off.  Skilled as any player in a Navarran troupe, Arabella played Simeon out like a trout with her demure flirting, reeling him in again.

Sebastian came upon her once, straightening her neckline on a walk from the Prince’s private garden, the one that lay between the two royal bedrooms.  He’d thought, “Ah, well that’s it, then.”

But the next evening had seen his father dancing attendance upon the chit with rabid fervor while his mother watched with worried eyes above an imperiously held chin.

_Blast the man.  No fool like a bloody old one._     Sebastian placed himself in Arabella’s path as the music swelled again and bowed over her hand.

He was still a royal son.  She couldn’t just walk away. 

Barely concealing a disgusted, still attractive, and clearly well practiced pout, Arabella allowed him to steer her around the ballroom.  Sebastian held his tongue and danced.  On the second spin, he started to let his fingers wander. 

Not so much to make him a danger.  Just to up the ante, a bit.   

In the end, Sebastian was rather startled at how little it took.  An extra glass of sparkling Antivan wine, a thigh pressed between her legs during their third dance.  A bit of pursuit at a musicale another night later and he found himself sprawled on his back in a bedroom tastefully  _tellingly_  decorated in rich gold and cream.  On her carpet, the wool scraping his back delightfully as she rode him with all the fervor of a dedicated horsewoman. 

She’d not hidden a thing.  Two or three people, several servants saw them in the Keep’s orange grove the next day with his hand up her skirts and enthusiastic instruction purring from her lips.

And when he made note of his surprise, Arabella had smiled, with poisoned sweetness.  “Oh, silly boy.  Everyone knows you don’t  _count_.  I might as well be having a divertissement with the stable boy.  Maybe a bit _outré_ , but nothing dangerous.”

It was the condescending pat on his arse as he left her bedroom that night that decided him.

Though Sebastian hesitated again, the next glittering evening, when Arabella curved a creamy smile at his father under his mother’s nose. 

_Did_  he count?  Why was he defending  _protecting_ anything?  The slightly embarrassed smile of his mother, her strained dark blue eyes, gave him a final push. 

He  _might not_  count but he was a Vael, same as the rest.  He had a duty.

Loud enough to be heard around the dias, Sebastian said, “Maker, my lord Father, but you  _do_ have good taste.”

Simeon’s eyes, narrower, paler, sharper than Sebastian’s own and shot about with stress lines pinned him and Sebastian struggled for a moment to maintain his lazy posture and drawl.  Arabella jerked around, her hand shaking and a splash of golden wine slopped over her gilded nails to spatter onto the grey marble floor.

Curving a practiced, lazy smile at her, he nodded.  “ _Excellent_ bottom.  Just a bit perverted.  Prettiest little heart shaped mole, right above her  _mons_.”  He pronounced the Orlesian word with a flair his tutor might have fainted over. “Lovely thing.”

Sebastian strolled away from the royal dias, all eyes on his exit, and brushed by her with only a pause.  “I do  _not_  count, silly girl.  But Prince Vael would never dally with my discards.”  She threw her wine in his face and he bowed, smirking and, it must be admitted, dripping a fair bit.  “Fare thee well, dovey.”

Not a word was said in later days, other than a minor announcement of a wedding in Antiva a couple of weeks later.

 Sebastian  _was_ pleasantly surprised by the hidden smiles of his family’s staff directed his way.   And even more surprised by the decided increase in his allowance and a few paid off debts, announced to him by Father’s openly pleased seneschal. 

He might not count.  But he was a Vael.  

 


End file.
